Why we can thank C.S. Lewis for “The Hobbit”

You probably didn’t know the famed author had a key role in the writing and success of his close friend J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published novel.

Two great authors

by Rob Kerby, Senior Editor

Where did the idea for The Hobbit come from? Author J.R.R. Tolkien himself seemed not to know. In a 1955 letter to longtime friend, poet W. H. Auden, Tolkien mused that the concept began on one day in the early 1930s, when at Oxford University, the professor was grading student papers.